Tempe Bicycle is the best bike shop in town for a few simple reasons -- selection, prices, service, and above-the-call extras like its free weekly bicycle clinics. Just blocks from ASU's campus, its location doesn't hurt, either. Inside the cavernous warehouse, there's an unkempt grease-monkey feel to the place, which is crammed with every sort of accessory possible alongside rows and rows of two-wheelers. There's really no competition, so don't be surprised if we continue to call Tempe Bicycle the best.

Though we hardly could be called card-carrying members of the country-club set, we do occasionally enjoy pretending that we can smack a tennis ball with the best of 'em. And that's a backhanded way of informing our fellow lob-sters that our favorite place to run ourselves in circles is this wonderful city-run facility, tucked away in a west Phoenix residential park. For a few bucks (and a few more at night), you can hit the yellow orb to your heart's content on one of the 22 well-kept, lighted courts. It doesn't hurt that the pro shop is stocked with goodies, the locker rooms are more than adequate and the vending machines rarely are empty. Now if only we can figure out how to get that first serve in more than once in a blue moon.

Head west, young sports fan! West Valley leaders know what their constituents want: good sports in good facilities and lots of 'em. Take a typical spring afternoon out at Surprise Stadium, the gorgeous baseball mecca that opened in 2002 for the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals. The stadium is packed with everything from Sun City retirees keeping their own score books and West Valley families enjoying the up-close-and-personal with major league stars to college spring breakers sunning on the plush grass beyond the outfield fence. It's a great baseball vibe in a beautiful baseball facility, a facility that, in time, will serve as part of the walkable urban core of the exploding city of Surprise.

While many skateboarders are willing to dish out $10 to skate in indoor parks with smaller ramps and a load of regulations (or illegally skate in commercial strip malls), adrenaline junkies in the know ride their boards under the sun at the Paradise Valley Skate Park. The Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department has three skate parks (including the Desert West Skateboard Plaza on Encanto Boulevard and the Pecos Park Skate Park), but the PV Skate Park has way more than the other two -- the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department's PR materials list the PV Skate Park's virtues with savvy heretofore unknown to bureaucrats: "kinked snakebowls, a kidney bowl, spine bowls, a banked alley, street plaza, flatbars, grinding ledges and blocks, pump bumps, sloped ramps, radial banks and an elongated funbox."

For those about to rock, we direct you . . . to AZ on the Rocks, where beginner, intermediate and women-only classes convene every couple of days. Learn the ropes -- and the lingo -- on 14,000 square feet of textured climbing terrain, with 50 top ropes, a lead-only cave, rappelling platform, chimney, separate bouldering area and -- we're not sure we like the sound of this -- "multiple cracks." "Arizona's largest indoor rock climbing gym" also has the hookup for kids, with designated family climb times, Saturday-morning "Kids Climbs," and certification classes for ages 12 to 14. While "Rock and Climb" sessions add a rock 'n' roll soundtrack, and three-hour party packages include a private room and party host, not-so-social climbers can get in the zone during members-only gym times.

Sure, there are other resort pools in town. But only at the Oasis can 25 adults party in a hot tub secluded from the lifeguard-patrolled toddler pool by faux red rock boulders and pretend they've found a private hot spring in Sedona.

The 17-year-old resort opened the $12.3 million water park just two years ago as one intentionally designed for an older demographic, and the rolling, six-acre enclave is full of the kinds of water features parents "ooh" over while the kids just yawn. Not to worry. There's something for everyone -- particularly you.

Yeah, the steep slides barreling down from the 83-foot tower at the back of the park rival Waterworld's Kilimanjaro for sheer free-fall thrills, and the 10,000-square-foot wave pool can keep the kids bobbing happily all afternoon. But it's the meandering lazy river feature, dubbed the Zuni, that really draws the crowds -- of chillin' grown folks content to float endlessly around the manmade red rock canyon, entertained by little more than misters, arcing water squirts and the occasional current-speeding jet stream.

The kids might eventually tire of the falls at Slide Canyon after a few climbs up the three-story staircase, but mom won't have to hear "I'm bored" until they find her -- which may take until dusk.